Optical fibers are commonly provided in protective cables. Inside these cables the fibers are often surrounded by protective filaments. Such protective filaments may be of a material such as an arimide. Such filaments provide multiple forms of protection to the fiber. Besides providing mechanical protection to the fiber inside the cable, they may be used to provide strain relief when the fiber emerges from the cable and is inserted into a connecter.
Such strain relief is required to isolate the fiber which is typically firmly held, either by an adhesive or a mechanical clamp, at the front of the connector, i.e., the end of the connector where the fiber terminates from mechanical stress. Strain relief is achieved by mechanically clamping the protective filaments to the connector.
Increasingly current designs utilize cables with no protective filaments. The fiber in such cables is protected solely by its protective buffer and the cable material itself. While this is proving to provide adequate protection of the fiber in the cable, it removes the possibility of using the protective filaments for strain relief at the connector. As a result, strain relief is provided by providing a clamping system at the back of the connector that will grip the fiber. While this provides adequate strain relief, it presents the problem that two different types of connectors are required. A desirable connector would be able to provide strain relief to fibers regardless of whether the cable in which they are contained utilize protective filaments.